This grass is variable in its size. In dry soils such as laterite soils, it is a very small plant not exceeding 9 or 10 inches across its spread. But in good soil and under favourable conditions the plant measures across 5 or 6 feet. Cattle eat the grass before it flowers and do not relish it so much when in flower. A common grass flourishing all over the Presidency. _Distribution._--Occurs in drier parts throughout India. [Illustration: Fig. 152.--Andropogon pertusus.] =Andropogon pertusus, _Willd._= This grass is perennial. Stems are tufted, very slender, widely creeping on all sides, purplish, but the flowering branches are erect or ascending from a geniculate base, leafy at base, the nodes of the creeping branches rooting and bearing tufts of branches which finally become independent plants at each node, the creeping branches vary in length from 1 to 3 feet and the erect ones from 10 to 18 inches or more. The _leaf-sheaths_ are terete or somewhat compressed, glabrous, sometimes ciliated near the node and shorter than the internode. The _ligule_ is a truncate membrane, slightly ciliate or not. _Nodes_ are bearded. The _leaf-blades_ in the prostrate branches are crowded, short linear-lanceolate, finely acuminate, soft, shortly hairy along the nerves, sparsely ciliate near the rounded base, varying in length from 1 to 2 inches and in breadth 1/8 to 1/4 inch; but on the flowering branches the leaves are longer, sometimes as long as twelve inches with bigger sheaths. [Illustration: Fig. 153.--Andropogon pertusus. 1. A portion of a spike; 2. a pair of spikelets; a. sessile and b. pedicelled; a-1. first glume; a-2. second glume; a-3. third glume; a-4. fourth glume and awn; a-5. ovary and stamens; a-6. grain; b-1. first glume of pedicelled spikelet front and back; b-2. second glume front and back; b-3. third glume.] The _inflorescence_ consists of three to nine, slender, flexuous, erect, purplish spikes, 1 to 2 inches long, alternately arranged on a thin, long, slender, smooth peduncle of about six inches; _rachis_ is slender and the joints and pedicels are densely silky with long hairs.